Conservative or Liberal, Deist or Pagan, Jersey transplant or Lehigh Valley native, we're all in this mess together. Let's talk. Let us do no harm. Today's one-liner: "The shortest way to the distinguishing excellence of any writer is through his hostile critics." Richard LeGallienne

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Can You Eat on $4.50 a Day?

LV Congressman Matt Cartwright will find out if he can do that today. It's called the SNAP Challenge, based on the average daily benefit for a food stamps recipient. It comes at a time when Congress is considering reducing this benefit by $20 billion over the next decade.

"As a practicing Catholic, my faith informs this issue," claims Cartwright. "I am guided by a moral vision of how we must treat the most vulnerable members of our society."

19 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Whether a SNAP recipient or not, a lot of people do eat on $4.50 a day, or even less. Doing it right involves a lot of pasta, rice, beans, and other inexpensive staples, plus cooking them all at home. And thinking/planning ahead. It's not fun, but it's doable.

The alternative is eating unhealthy, usually high-fructose corn syrup laden, processed crap and running short before month's end. Which far too many people unfortunately do.

I hope Cartwright follows through with this. It's quite a lesson of what many of his constituents deal with on a daily basis.

Maybe Mr Cartwright could try living on the minimum wage next. Then he could ask his fellow house members to do the same. Then give up their lavish perks, pay and pensions and live like the rest of us in the private sector. Then they could turn those savings over to the most vulnerable.Always easy to be generous with other peoples money

Bernie,I have my mothers "War Ration Book Four.from The U.S.Office of Price Administration . The reason I have it is because my Grandparents did not consume everything they could have during WW2. I see FRAUD on a regular day. I mean what SNAP will pay for. Example,Last summer at Walmart food store Horry County S.C I observed two over weight consumers filling two basket pushcarts with stuff I would not even consider spending on my family ,box foods, ready made frozen ice drinks crab legs and out comes the SNAP CARD and into a GMC Yukon XL that costs half as much as we paid for our house on Cattell Street!Now what was going on here? I preach to my own family that bottled water costs me $762.00 a year at the present rate after tax income and this is why the poor stay poor. Rules are needed in this program.

For those commenting about bad food choices, Walmart, etc, I suggest checking out "Food Stamps: Follow the Money". This online investigative journalism effort is rather eyeopening.

"The point here is that banks that administer SNAP have a vested interest in keeping SNAP enrollments high and makers of junk foods have a vested interest in making sure that there are no restrictions on use of benefits."

Full text: http://www.eatdrinkpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/FoodStampsFollowtheMoneySimon.pdf

I agree there are recipients that push the limits of others' patience and then some. But the big "winners" in the food stamp program are huge corporations who lobby and reap huge welfare benefits (while outsourcing good paying jobs and shirking paying taxes, no less) on the taxpayers dime much, much more so than the ppl who eat junk.

Yes, I agree with Poster 4;52- However may I add that the junk food kills of the people that consume it at a high rate and the intermediary fix costs the tax payers again, MILLIONS One 18 yr. old over weight female of a disadvantaged background costs the tax payers over 1 million dollars before she dies off of diabetic and heart problems. The way to stay this revolving development would be education with personal economic strings attached. Now think about how any many of these people in this country fit this description.

I would hope that somebody in the agriculture or nutrition sections of the hierarchy would help with tech sector .Now ,I don't pretend to know anything about tech sector but if Zappo's can get me sneakers here from Vegas UPS in 20 hrs., somebody can control what is fed to America's poor children with what is allowed with bar codes,and incentives.Target; Sugar and fat foods ,any bar code with 45% plus fat factor, cholesterol,ect.-Somebody at NIKE ---Note; no over weights at NIKE and they play at work as a work out--they could get it right and market it properly ,making 'COOL " TO BE HEALTHY ,I do not think any one on this site would ever want any child to not have enough to eat. The trick is to get the mothers of those children to understand that proper foods are more important than lottery tickets , Newports or big screens . A PRIVATE MARKET can fix it. Not Washington not Harrisburg.

Sorry, you're WRONG. I do it, every single day. For those hit hard by the recession, it's a necessity.

But it does take some education, dedication, and the ability to actually cook. And those things are sadly lacking in a whole lot of people it seems.

BTW, for those that say they don't have "time" to cook: You do. You just need to learn how. A lot of perfectly delicious and nutritious stuff can be whipped out in less actual time than your (unhealthy) microwave takes to ruin food. Toss some rice, veggies, and some beans or chicken in a oven-proof dish, season it, cover, throw it in the oven or toaster oven, and it's dinner. Tons of time to do other things while it's cooking for that 45 minutes or so.

If you can't think ahead or wait 45 minutes to eat good food on the cheap, well, I can't help you and it says a lot about what the real problem is.